hung all that while between the Walloon Synods of the United Provinces and the French Protestant Church Courts, the latter on the whole favouring him, the former more and more bent on disgracing him.  In April of the present year a Walloon Synod at Tergou had actually passed on him a sentence of suspension from the ministerial office and from the holy communion “until by a sincere repentance of his sins he shall have repaired so many scandals he has brought upon us.”  In spite of this, a French Provincial Synod, held at Ai in Champagne in the following month, had ordered his admission to be carried into effect, and the Parisian consistory had obeyed this order, though two members of it protested.  There had since then been another Walloon Synod, held at Nimeguen in September, in which the former sentence of the Tergou Synod was confirmed, but, for the sake of peace between the Walloon Church and their brethren of the French Protestant Church, it was agreed to waive all farther jurisdiction over Morus in Holland and to “remit the whole cause unto the prudence, discretion, and charity of the National Assembly of the French churches to meet at Loudun.”  This was the Synod of whose approaching meeting Oldenburg had informed Milton—­the Synod of Loudun in Anjou (Nov. 10, 1659—­Jan. 10, 1660).  It was to be a very important assembly indeed,—­no mere Provincial Synod, but a national one, expressly allowed by Louis XIV., and to consist of deputies, clerical and lay, from all the Protestant churches of France, empowered to transact all business relating to those churches under certain royal regulations and restrictions, and in the presence of a royal Commissioner.  As there had been no such National Protestant Synod in France for fifteen years, there was an accumulation of business for it, the case of Morus included.  They were to examine that case de novo, and to pronounce finally whether Morus was guilty or not guilty, whether he should remain a minister of the French Church or not.[1]

[Footnote 1:  Bayle, Art. Morus, and Bruce’s Life of Morus, 204-226.]

Milton’s replies to the two letters will now be intelligible.  He writes, it will be observed, in a gloomy mood, on the very day on which Whitlocke, for different reasons, was in a gloomy mood too and “wishing himself out of these daily hazards":—­

  TO HENRY OLDENBURG.

“That forgiveness which you ask for your silence you will give rather to mine; for, if I remember rightly, it was my turn to write to you.  By no means has it been any diminution of my regard for you (of this I would have you fully persuaded) that has been the impediment, but only my employments or domestic cares; or perhaps it is mere sluggishness to the act of writing that makes me guilty of the intermitted duty.  As you desire to be informed, I am, by God’s mercy, as well as usual.  Of any such work as compiling the history of our political troubles, which you